Cousin Richard had been looking forward to playing hide-and-seek in their barnyard, mildly annoyed that they got stuck with little Edna. She always begged to come along, then cried when she couldn’t keep up.

 Not much moving in the hot and dusty summer afternoon, but the peacock strolling around. He seemed relaxed and regal, but for the muscle coils in that iridescent blue neck and eyes scanning for snakes to eat. Somehow seemed fitting that when he strikes, his neck moves like a snake.

Cousin Richard, who was It, leaned against the big cottonwood tree with arms crossed in front of his eyes, counting aloud towards 100. He could hear one child making for the chickenyard; one heading towards the tack room; one slipping around the bunkhouse, probably aiming for the vegetable patch; and Edna, scurrying across the barnyard. She was at the corral fence, unhidden,  when Cousin Richard called out 90.

“I’m not the baby anymore!” She was determined not to let them laugh at her this time. She scrambled up to grab the top plank of the corral fence, swung over, and dropped. But she didn’t land on dirt, and not so far down as her legs expected.

She landed with a thump on a living boulder that roiled and rumbled – earthquake, volcano — and resolved itself into a huge bull. She was about the size of his head. Instinct ricocheted her back onto the fence and she scrambled up. The bull roared and lurched thunderously to his feet. Bewildered and enraged, he stormed around the corral and crashed into the fence she perched on. Jolted almost loose, but determined, she clung more tightly, staring at the stamping, scraping hooves ripping and tearing the ground.

Taking a deep breath, she pulled herself together and while clinging tightly with one hand she shot the other up to grab the next plank of the corral. That worked. More confidently, she climbed up and over, bracing each time for the shock when the bull threw himself at the fence.

It was oddly quiet beyond the fence. She stood gasping as the adrenaline drained away. Cousin Richard tapped her shoulder. “Good job.” He grinned. “You’re it.”  She slugged him and covered her eyes.

Moss Springmeyer strives to express the world (s) in a grain of sand. Moss’s “Mountain Mail Runner” will appear in Academy of the Heart and Mind (Autumn 2024) Moss also recently explored other worlds in “Fur-Break” concerning a resourceful, ageing werewolf in the Spring 2024 issue of Altered Reality(p. 16) https://www.alteredrealitymag.com/spring-2024-issue/ and “Choirboy” which probes a child’s experience of the glory and cruelty of a very special gift in story block 2 of the Spring 2024 issue of The Green Silk Journal https://www.thegsj.com/current-issue-spring-.html.